Above: a 1963 photo of Bill Gaines entering the MAD offices. Poking their heads out of the door are (from top to bottom): Nick Meglin, John Putnam, Al Feldstein, Leonard Brenner, Nelson Tirado, and Jerry De Fuccio.

I'm out of the office or away from the blog, so here's a rerun:

A heartfelt 1977 New York Times Magazine article about MAD's influence on R. Crumb, The Muppets, and the world at large.

From the July 31, 1977 New York Times: "THE 'MAD' GENERATION - After 25 years of perpetuating humor in the jugular vein, the magazine that wised up millions of kids is still a crazy hit" by Tony Hiss (son of Alger) and Jeff Lewis.

Below is page one, which should blow up nice and big for easy reading of the ol' pixels.

Like millions of other boys, I grew up with MAD. In the early 1970s, I distinctly recall making the decision to subscribe (when I realized I could get the mag for less than the cover price of 40 cents if I could save up the dollars), and walking down the shag-carpeted hallway to good ol' Dad, sitting in his chair in the living room, to ask him to make out a check to the good folks at E.C. Publications.

Above: a special painting by Norman Mingo done especially for the Times, so says the article. Let me know if that's not true.

I was pleased to see credit given to Harvey Kurtzman, and there is a hat tip to the circumstances of his leaving the mag after its first 22 issues.

I love the above photo, taken in 1963, of Bill Gaines, in what looks like full samba mode, and some of the MAD staff (from top to bottom in the doorway) Nick Meglin, John Putnam, Al Feldstein, Leonard Brenner, Nelson Tirado and Jerry De Fuccio.

The scan on this is not the greatest. The Times magazine, as of 31 years ago, was rather large and required multiple scans in my poky scanner.

By the way, last week, the Times cut the width of their paper by 1.5 inches. Shrinky, shrinky, shrinky! This makes the Times about the same width as the Wall Street Journal. And this is after raising its price from $1.00 to $1.25 per daily issue. My wallet is going shrinky too.

Serena Bramble edited together a short homage to film noir on her Mac. Her

" ... short film tribute to film noir created a sensation at the Castro Theatre's 8th annual Noir City Film Festival last month. This is on several blogs, as Bramble's brilliance brings a luminosity to flickering frames in the dark balconies of memory. A 20-year-old psychology student at Santa Rosa Junior College, she created The Endless Night with iMovie on her MacBook, commenting, 'After many long hours, this is my tribute to my favorite genre, to the dark shadows and the profound despair of the soul.' The music is "Angel" by Massive Attack. (Control click heading at top for David Raksin's 'Laura.')"

I see clips like this, from these old film noir movies I've seen and some I haven't -- and I want to watch all of them.

I look at the movies that are playing now, or that are the most popular with the Netflix subscribers -- and I just am not interested. I mean, how many times can Ben Stiller go to a museum? Ugh. Give me Stanwyck and Bogie and Davis.

"In the 1950s, when the world was faced with strange or anomalous threats, there was one man who was called on to set the situation right -- Jet Scott of the Office of Scientifact! Whether it was tracking down deadly Banthrax germs, uncovering the source of strange ocean creatures, or discovering the cause of spontaneously combusting pipelines in Saudi Arabia, Jet Scott was the adventurer who could get to the truth!"

We live in such a time when a forgotten strip that lasted only 2 years, from 1953 to 1955, published by the New York Herald-Tribune (and seen in few markets) now sees the new light of day between hardcovers.

This is not cartoons. This is a recipe for Roasted Vegetables with Brown Rice, since Don and Suzanne Orehek asked about it. I took some photos of the dish thinking maybe someone else out there might be interested.

Cut up the cauliflower, halve the brussel sprouts, cut the potato into small sticks, spread onto a jelly roll pan. Place thinly sliced red onion and chopped fresh garlic over the top. Drizzle it with olive oil, put some salt and pepper on it. Bake for 30-40 minutes at 425 degrees or until brown on the edges. I use the center rack of the oven.

After 15 minutes, the aroma of the garlic fills the kitchen.

Above: this is a photo of the roasted vegetables just out of the oven. I scoop up maybe 2 cups of brown rice on a plate and put the vegetables on top.

Some knock-out book designs for some of Jules Verne's great works by Jim Tierney. Jim is studying illustration at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. This is all part of his senior thesis; a competition for the William H. Ely award.

"Being equal parts book-nerd and design-nerd, I naturally decided to re-design some classic Jules Verne novels. I‘m a big Verne fan, but a chance to re-design any classic book is always exciting. Classics usually allow for a more personal interpretation, since most people are already vaguely familiar with the premise of the books, and I didn’t have to compete with one well-known cover, as I might have with a more recent book."

Here's veteran cartoonist Tex Blaisdell, whose talents spanned DC Comics and many syndicated features, guesting on this 1970 episode of the To Tell the Truth game show.

At this time, Mr. Blaisdell had taken over LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE after creator Harold Gray's death in 1968.

Some members of the celebrity panel (composed of Tom Posten, Peggy Cass, Gene Rayburn and Kitty Carlisle) ham it up, reading a very early ANNIE strip aloud. Actually, one of the very earliest ANNIEs. It's the strip from August 14, 1924, the middle of the second week of the feature when Mrs. Warbucks takes Annie from the orphanage to the Warbucks estate. As Kitty Carlisle remarks, people have not heard of Mrs. Warbucks, the wife of Daddy Warbucks. The explanation offered is that she was an unsympathetic character and Mr. Gray wrote her out of the strip.

I was indifferent to DICK TRACY. I saw it in the newspaper growing up and I had read some of the old strips in those comics history books, but it wasn't until Blackthorne began reprinting the old TRACY strips in comic book and softcover format during the 1980s that I began to see why this highly stylized cops and robbers stories were so well regarded.

TRACY is a markedly narrow strip that leaves no doubt that evil men (and women) exist and good (through sweat and perseverance) will eventually triumph. But while its scope may be narrow, Gould mines deeply. Tracy is the bright light of justice in this dangerous comic strip world. His morals as solid as his chin, this cop is unafraid to use as much violence against the ruthless villains as they themselves dish out.

How grim is Tracy's world? As Don Markstein points out, within the strip's first week, Dick's girlfriend Tess Trueheart is kidnapped and her dear old dad is rubbed out. Mayberry this ain't!

DICK TRACY was created by Chester Gould (1900-1985), who was at the helm 365 days a year from October 4, 1931 to December 25, 1977. Dick Locher has been part of the team behind this Tribune Media strip for over 30 years now.

Here is a series of six cards from the Chester Gould Dick Tracy Museum that were part of a goody bag of items from the 2006 National Cartoonists Society Reubens weekend that was held in Chicago. Each card reproduced some terrific TRACY collectible and then there are interesting facts on the other side of the card. This is the whole set:

Above is the front and back of the first card. These are all square, and about the size of a CD. The even came in a jewel box.

Ger Apeldoorn, tanned and rested after his Florida honeymoon, returned to his lovely home in the Netherlands to discover that there were "[n]o burglars trying to steal my newspaper strip collection," and so promises lots more cartoony goodness at his Fabuleous Fifties blog.

"Wolfe describes cartooning as starting with a blank mind and a blank piece of paper. The cartoon may emerge in 10 minutes or in tow hours - plus. Above is what he calls a 'comicature' of himself. 'It's less searching than a caricature,' he says, 'but friendlier.'"

Via The Stranger's Paul Constant, here's his process for a full page cartoon:

"The Playboy [illustrations] can go on for quite a stretch, because I do really elaborate production with those. Because it's color and full page, it's a series of sort of underpaintings. I'll do the pen drawing, then I'll do the first color, then I'll spray it with a workable fixative, and then I'll do another color on top, or some other medium, sometimes. Sometimes I'll do more watercolor, sometimes something else. With New Yorker [cartoons], sometimes I'll do the thing to the point where I think that's all I can do, and then I'll set it down, and then just sort of sneak a look at it as I pass by, and then the next day, check it out again, just to see, and stuff will pop into view that I had missed. So that's how it works. It's not regular. Sometimes it'll take a couple of days, sometimes it'll take a little longer."

This is one of those things I ran into on the Web. I don't know what I was searching for, but this popped up and since it had some great art and photos. OK, the photos are darn muddy, but , hey, I had to share. So, here's the St. Petersburg Times' enthusiastic coverage of a National Cartoonists Society exhibit of cartoons from 1948.

Above cartoon splash page by Dick Bothwell, "described as 'the St. Petersburg edition of Will Rogers."' This was back in the day when every newspaper had a staff cartoonist. The larger papers had more than one.

Milt Caniff, Rube Goldberg and other NCS luminaries made the trip down to Florida for the festivities surrounding this show of original cartoon art that had traveled from the Nyack, NY Rockland Foundation Gallery. And why not? It was in a great hotel, with warm weather and year-round golf.

At Memorial Hospital in New York City [,] members of the National Cartoonists Society decorated the walls of the Children's Cancer Ward with their characters. Left to right: Otto Soglow, Milton Caniff, C.D. Russell, Rube Goldberg, Russell Patterson, Gus Edson, Ernie Bushmiller and Joe Shuster.

Above: a courtesy photo that was reprinted in the Times. Just look at that line up of cartoonist greats, huh? And the NCS continues the tradition of visiting hospitals to this day.

The nice thing about a book on a shelf is that it lives on. Case in point: Jack Kent. If you were a kid in the 60s and 70s, you might know about his books. If you were growing up in the 50s and 60s, you might know about his comic strip, KING AROO. IDW Publishing did, and this week it adds it to its Library of American Comics, which includes TERRY AND THE PIRATES, LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE, BRINGING UP FATHER and BLOOM COUNTY.

Jack Kent (1920-1985) wrote and drew 40 children's books, and illustrated 20 more. Writer and book lover Burgin Streetman, writing for the San Antonio Current, discovered him for the first time two years ago. She found an old copy of his book JACK KENT'S TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS. Here is how she ran across Jack Kent's work and how that started a quest.

"In my thrift-shop travels, I’ve come across a lot of forgotten gems, but there was something different about this book. The innocence of the illustrations, the sweetness in the characters’ faces, and the irreverence of the story made me want to know more about Mr. Kent. A thorough search through online bookshops, local thrift stores, and seven states’ worth of rare-book dealers led me right back to the place where I started, San Antonio. Jack Kent is probably the most famous illustrator you’ve never heard of"

This week, IDW's Library of American Comics, publishes what San Antonio native Jack Kent drew for 15 years before he did those children's books; the comic strip KING AROO. As the cover blurb states, this is "A royal invitation to a comics masterpiece in the tradition of Krazy Kat, Barnaby and Pogo." And that ain't no hyperbolic bunk.

Kent's comment in his NCS bio that King Aroo, "which ran (or jogged) for fifteen years, beginning in 1950, made me world famous for blocks around," is the kind of self deprecating joking a shy fellow might say. Truth is, AROO was highly regarded by both readers and Kent's colleagues.

Above: the first strip from November 1950, nicked from an interview with Bruce Canwell, Associate Editor of The Library of American Comics, at the Westfield Comics blog.

King Aroo was the monarch of Myopia, a pocket kingdom that doesn't seem to appear on most maps. His prime minister, grand vizier, chief advisor, or whatever, was named Yupyop. The two were about equally out of touch with reality and common sense, but Aroo's child-like unconcern for the duties and dignities of a king contrasted with Yupyop's more business-like attitude.

In his teenage years, during the mid-’30s, he was part of the very first generation of fans… some wags might even say he was part of the first generation of fanboys. He referred to himself as “Texas Jack” in letters he wrote to all the major comic strip artists (this was all a few years before Action Comics #1, remember, so comic strips, not comic books, ruled the day). His letters were brimming with boyish enthusiasm, they showed how carefully he studied all the strips, he outrageously flattered the artists, and he always asked them to send him an original piece of artwork. His approach worked – seventy-five percent of the artists to whom he wrote sent responses that included autographs, pictures, and yes, original strips or drawings. Jack built a sizable collection in only about a year’s time! He ended up on Milton Caniff’s Christmas card list. He got letters and long-distance phone calls from George Herriman. All the while, Kent kept honing his own artistic skills until finally, he made it: he sold King Aroo and graduated from the ranks of the fans to the ranks of the pros.

Above: "Alien Spy," a piece of Mike Lynch Juvenalia. A splash page for a comic book story of mine when I was a kid. This was when I was heavy into Marvel's Warlock by Jim Starlin.

I get emails. A lot of them are from people who want to cartoon for a living. Some of these people are good cartoonists, some of them are on the way, still learning.

One of the traps is getting hung up on tools. A cartoonist emailed me, saying that now that he had finally saved the money to buy a Wacom tablet & stylus, he could now begin cartooning.

Stan Goldberg, who now draws Archie, points out that all he needs is a piece of paper and a pencil. That's all he needed since he was a kid.

Stan, like me, was of the pre-Wacom generation.

I'm lucky that my Dad was a working graduate student when I was a kid. We had no money for fancy paper or pens, and so I was never into the tools.

Dad would being home some "scratch paper;" leftover mimeos from the classes that my Dad was teaching or, when he got his Ph.D., extra copies of internal memos. This was free drawing paper. I would draw on the back of these. Above: the back of the "Alien Spy" page.

Above: another superhero that I made up when I was a wee tot: Eagle Man. I did a lot of shading and noodling around. Notice me hiding his left hand, and making the other inot a simple fist. I was afraid to draw hands then. This period was heavily influenced by the Bob Kane Batman reprints in BATMAN: FROM THE 30S TO THE 70s hardcover.

... And here is the back of the Eagle Man drawing: a 1972 University Film Association memo from then-secretary Dr. Lynch (who would go on to serve as President).

Of course, like a lot of students, I would not pay attention in class and doodle. But that not paying attention thing leads to some bad grades. (Note the date above, written in the nerdly STAR TREK star date format -- 7612.14 = December 12, 1976.)

Best to wait and draw once I am home. (Do as I say and not as I did.)

Please do not get hung up on fancy tools. Don't let your economic situation slow you down if you want to cartoon. Cartooning can be done for very little money. Like Bob Montana said: It's the think, not the ink. That was today's message -- and the excuse for going through my nostalgia box of drawings.